Oasis Community Learning
Head of Talent Acquisition
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The sun is shining, schools are breaking up for the summer, England had even been doing well in the world cup….does it get much better?
Well, if you’re a talent acquisition leader who’s attracted to a purpose driven organisation, motivated by a chance to make a positive impact, and not yet ready to offload everything to AI, then perhaps the best is yet to come!
Oasis Community Learning is one of the UK’s largest multi-academy trusts and we’re looking to appoint a new Head of Talent Acquisition. In this role you’ll lead a small TA team and continue the work of delivering and improving our TA service to support our community of 56 primary and secondary schools, as well as our central service functions.
We’re looking for a proven TA functional leader, who combines a spirit of innovative and ambitious thinking, balanced with a strongly pragmatic and practical approach. Cracking hiring in the Education sector is not easy, but we’re firm believers it can be done and when we have, it will be transformational to the lives and life chances of young people up and down the country.
The role
Reporting to the Director of People and Culture you will lead, develop and continuously improve recruitment across the organisation. You’ll lead a regional team of 4 that directly manage hiring across the National and Corporate functions, as well as appointment to academy leaderships positions. You will lead the strategic direction and tactical implementation of best practice recruitment across the academy trust, and be an active member of the People leadership team.
Some additional core responsibilities will include:
- To manage, coach and develop the Talent Advisory team helping to establish them as a high-performing team, delivering exceptional results.
- Lead the development of communications, training, tools and processes that deliver an excellent hiring manager and candidate experience.
- Manage regular reporting requirements, interrogating data and analytics to measure performance and ROI, identify trends, guide strategic decision making and drive continuous improvement.
- Manage stakeholder relationship, from strategic suppliers/partners to internal the internal leadership community to ensure the highest quality outcomes for OCL.
- In conjunction with the Director of People and leadership team, to develop long term strategies to enhance talent attraction, ranging from cultivating talent pipelines and the ongoing development and communication of an effective EVP and employer brand.
- To ensure all recruitment activities support OCL’s commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and adhere to the requirements around safeguarding and good governance.
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The person
We’re looking for a senior Talent Acquisition professional with an accomplished record in leading a TA function and a proven record of positively impacting service delivery. The Education sector has some unique features, such as the strong focus around safeguarding and termly patterns of hiring activity. So, whilst same sector experience is not essential, you’ll need to be able to demonstrate the ability to appreciate and acclimatise to new environments, quickly. We’re looking for someone who’ll bring an appetite for creative thinking and continual improvement, combined with a practical mindset and a resilient, patient approach to change.
Some additional key indicators we’ll be looking for are:
- Proven experience leading an in-house TA function (some experience in agency/search could also be preferable).
- An exceptional ability to build productive and effective relationships at all levels, establishing credibility and influence with senior internal stakeholders and external suppliers/partners.
- Demonstrable expertise around candidate attraction strategies, including EVP/Employer Brand, ED&I, candidate experience, recruitment marketing.
- Education sector is not essential, but experience within an equivalent sector with similar market challenges will be advantageous (e.g. strong focus on compliance, juggling high volume and hard to fill roles, resource and budget constraints).
- An effective and proactive communicator.
- A strong people manager, able to motivate, coach and support a dispersed team.
- Operates with a high level of integrity, personal accountability and curiosity.
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About Oasis Community Learning
Oasis is a charitable Trust of 56 schools (academies) located in some of the most challenged and deprived areas of England. Our overall vision for every part of the Oasis trust is for community. A place where everyone is included, making a contribution and reaching their absolute potential. As well as delivering first-class, innovative education, we seek to build a ‘Hub’ in each of the areas where we work; creating safe and inspiring local neighbourhoods that provide integrated and diverse services to benefit the whole person and whole community.
This makes us unique in our field and gives the Talent Acquisition team some real differentiators with which to go to market. Our job is to leverage that difference and to make Oasis stand out as the employer of choice within a very congested and challenging education sector.
Would you like to join us on our mission?
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